Rainbow Rock Shop Dinosaurs
Holbrook, Arizona
Holbrook has a reputation as a town filled with dinosaur statues, but most of them congregate in the tiny front yard of the Rainbow Rock Shop. Owner Adam Luna reportedly took 20 years to build his 11 dinosaurs out of cement and reinforcing rods. They stand in a small concrete patio, some enclosed within a chain-link fence.
Rocks for sale are in abundance here: big piles of petrified wood out back, and smaller piles of specialty rocks scattered among the dinosaurs. Hand-painted signs try to explain geologic forces to people like us: "Geodes come from the center of the earth blown out of a volcano as a bubble. It fell to the ground and was buried by volcanic ash."
Another big fence encloses part of the back yard, decorated with a mural of various Jurassic creatures, beneath a sign that reads "See Dinosaur Bones."
The Rainbow Rock Shop is THE stop in town if you want to take snapshots of or with dinosaurs, and owner Luna knows it, charging anywhere from 75 to 98 cents for photo-ops with some of the smaller, kid-sized dinos. That annoys some people, who may have noticed all the free dinosaurs sprinkled around the Southwest. But considering the hefty fees that places like Parrot Jungle Island and Theater of the Sea charge for photo ops with their animals, paying less than a buck for a snapshot of your kid with a Luna dinosaur is a bargain.